Covid-19 and Politics

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ohms said:
That came up at the recent House of Commons Committee meeting and was addressed by Prof. Gilbert:

Looks like it's something the scientists are aware of.
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It's interesting that this seems to be an adjuvant effect again. Useful things adjuvants in that they allow killed vaccines which have a small finite dose because they don't multiply in the body to produce a useful immune response, but they themselves can be a problem. The local soreness and malaise that are trivial non-specific adverse effects of a vaccine are actually reactions to the adjuvant. The bleeding calves saga also turned out to be caused by the adjuvant in the BVD vaccine.

The cute thing about DNA vaccines is that they have the safety profile of killed or subunit vaccines in that they cannot possibly revert to virulence, but they multiply in the body like live vaccines to produce a much larger effective dose and so they don't need an adjuvant. Adjuvant problems will not be an issue with the Oxford virus. I'd be looking for issues with the vector method, and I'd have to go to animal vaccines to find much. I'm not aware of any issues there though.
 
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lomiller said:
Being aware of it and knowing how to get around it are 2 different things. ADE is part of the reason there has never been a successful vaccine for Dengue, AIDS, SARS or MERS.

The real risk, however, is political not scientific. A vaccine is being viewed as a magic bullet that will solve all the issues around COVID-19 and allow everything to return to the way it was. There will be enormous political pressure to fast track any vaccine that shows potential, but this invariably means lowering standards for testing. That would be bad at the best of times, but for a virus family already known to elicit ADE inadequate testing could be a disaster.
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There's a lot more than that preventing an AIDS vaccine. The MERS vaccine is still in development but as the disease is controlled it's not urgent to fast-track it. The SARS vaccine was doing fine but was abandoned because the disease was successfully eradicated by ordinary contact tracing and isolation. Sure the ADE thing has been an issue but it's been addressed, it wasn't a deal-breaker with either SARS or MERS and people seem to be blowing it out of all proportion as a way of rubbishing the potential for a Covid vaccine.

An effective vaccine is capable of solving all the problems surrounding this virus if it's used properly. That is, don't just shoot it into everyone who'll hold still long enough and declare "job done" but use it as part of a structured elimination strategy. Ring vaccination around new outbreaks. Targeted vaccination to people most at risk (care workers, taxi and bus drivers and so on). That mitigates the issues with not having enough doses at first.

If it is possible to blanket-vaccinate the entire country, do it all at once so that the peak immunity happens in everyone simultaneously (assuming the protection isn't very long-lived). And continue with case identification, contact tracing and isolation until there really aren't any more new cases.

In fact this virus is a push-over. No insect vector, no wildlife reservoir, no airborne spread, no long-term asymptomatic carriers. It's a sitting duck. The only thing that keeps it going is the difficulty of getting human beings to change their behaviour for long enough. Once the majority of people are vaccinated there really is a good chance it will vanish permanently, we just have to usher it out to be on the safe side.

And yes, this assumes the vaccine is safe. I'd be more concerned about the possibility of something previously unknown, like the bleeding calves thing, than a known hazard that vaccine developers are well aware of. But on the whole, the odds are very much in our favour here.
 
Nessie said:
Hence, we have just told a relative we will only see him on good days when he can sit outside, as he has been socialising with multiple households.

He lives alone in a tiny flat and generally he has been very good, but, he has clearly had enough and is now prepared to take risks.
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That's very wise. If he's in Scotland, especially if he's not in Glasgow, Edinburgh or Lanarkshire, the risk is small, but there's no sense in letting your guard down prematurely.

I have three sets of relatives in Motherwell who have been shielding throughout, although one cousin spent ten days in hospital with a heart issue a couple of weeks ago. And another is due to go in for some sort of eye procedure. The cousin who was in hospital says she was tested for coronavirus every four days while she was in.

I'm planning to pick a nice day and drive over there and see all of them, but I'll stay in the gardens just as an extra precaution. I sure as hell don't have it and I'm pretty confident none of them do either, but I've been trained in disease control and my spinal reflexes say don't go into a confined space with anyone at all, not yet.
 
Rolfe said:
That's very wise. If he's in Scotland, especially if he's not in Glasgow, Edinburgh or Lanarkshire, the risk is small, but there's no sense in letting your guard down prematurely.

I have three sets of relatives in Motherwell who have been shielding throughout, although one cousin spent ten days in hospital with a heart issue a couple of weeks ago. And another is due to go in for some sort of eye procedure. The cousin who was in hospital says she was tested for coronavirus every four days while she was in.

I'm planning to pick a nice day and drive over there and see all of them, but I'll stay in the gardens just as an extra precaution. I sure as hell don't have it and I'm pretty confident none of them do either, but I've been trained in disease control and my spinal reflexes say don't go into a confined space with anyone at all, not yet.
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Pretty much what Dad says too.

And like, you it was animal disease control. Early in his career he was involved in the 1967 Foot and Mouth outbreak, and was quite shocked at how the lessons from that had been forgotten in 2000-2001 and the start of this epidemic in the UK.
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53320155

"Only 22% of people testing positive for coronavirus reported having symptoms on the day of their test, according to the Office for National Statistics."

https://theferret.scot/scotland-coronavirus-testing-care-homes/

"The number of tests in Scotland has not reached 10,000 on any day during the coronavirus pandemic, according to official figures.
Testing capacity has been significantly increased, with Scotland now able to undertake at least 15,000 tests per day. But the highest number of tests, combining tests done in NHS labs with those done in regional testing centres, was 6,519 on 16 May 2020."

I work in care and not one of us has been tested. Madness, when we could be unaware we are carrying and there is plenty of capacity to test us.
 
jimbob said:
Pretty much what Dad says too.

And like, you it was animal disease control. Early in his career he was involved in the 1967 Foot and Mouth outbreak, and was quite shocked at how the lessons from that had been forgotten in 2000-2001 and the start of this epidemic in the UK.
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I'm like a stuck record on that one. I even came across an article I wrote about it in 2001, tucked away on my hard drive.

And the idiot who caused and oversaw the carnage in 2001 is Sir David King, chair of Independent Sage, and he actually boasts about it. I don't think he realises even now what he did. It's not reassuring.
 
Nessie said:
I work in care and not one of us has been tested. Madness, when we could be unaware we are carrying and there is plenty of capacity to test us.
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I agree they need to expand the testing. Although there seems to be better testing in hospitals now. Overall though, how do we winkle out the cases we're not seeing from the 5.45 million people here.

The models say we're really having about 75 new cases a day. I think the model is a bit pessimistic but better that than complacent. But how do we find these since we can't test everything that moves and breathes?
 
Rolfe said:
(Respectful snip)

In fact this virus is a push-over. No insect vector, no wildlife reservoir, no airborne spread, no long-term asymptomatic carriers. It's a sitting duck. The only thing that keeps it going is the difficulty of getting human beings to change their behaviour for long enough. Once the majority of people are vaccinated there really is a good chance it will vanish permanently, we just have to usher it out to be on the safe side.
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I really like this paragraph, but is the highlighted correct? My understanding is such a reservoir exists, in pangolins and/or bats.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Tory conference cancelled and replaced by virtual event due to coronavirus

Schools and pubs are safe though, the virus knows the difference.
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That should be interesting; in my experience the average Tory party member can't operate a smartphone without a distinct risk of electrocution.
 
Blue Mountain said:
I really like this paragraph, but is the highlighted correct? My understanding is such a reservoir exists, in pangolins and/or bats.
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Not in terms of general transmission to keep the pandemic going. The virus was almost certainly zoonotic in origin but the pandemic is purely human transmission. It's not like rabies or even tuberculosis.
 
Nessie said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53320155

"Only 22% of people testing positive for coronavirus reported having symptoms on the day of their test, according to the Office for National Statistics."

https://theferret.scot/scotland-coronavirus-testing-care-homes/

"The number of tests in Scotland has not reached 10,000 on any day during the coronavirus pandemic, according to official figures.
Testing capacity has been significantly increased, with Scotland now able to undertake at least 15,000 tests per day. But the highest number of tests, combining tests done in NHS labs with those done in regional testing centres, was 6,519 on 16 May 2020."

I work in care and not one of us has been tested. Madness, when we could be unaware we are carrying and there is plenty of capacity to test us.
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I'd like to know if they followed up with people: who developed symptoms and how soon after the positive test?

Do we know?
 
Blue Mountain said:
I really like this paragraph, but is the highlighted correct? My understanding is such a reservoir exists, in pangolins and/or bats.
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There certainly was a wildlife reservoir this emerged from. But we did get SARS 1 down to no human cases and a further transfer of infection from an animal reservoir did not reinfect the human population.

Unless this one is a directly related genetic cousin anyway.

But as for airborne, I've been posting the research that it is airborne months ago. Now a bunch of scientists are speaking out about that very problem.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
So, it would appear Melbourne is locking down a giant high rise in the poor side of town while rich suburbs including apartments are not given the same discourtesy.

Victoria coronavirus restrictions: Which suburbs are in lockdown?

Doesn't show the high rise locked down so I'll have to keep looking for the story reported on in the BBC news tonight.
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I saw something about this draconian step. It reminds me of what they were doing in Wuhan, China. In a democracy?

Video is from the BBC:
 
Puppycow said:
I saw something about this draconian step. It reminds me of what they were doing in Wuhan, China.
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And Italy and Spain and Germany and New Zealand and the list goes on.
In a democracy?
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All these above, reacted to the pandemic by restricting people to their houses.
All democracies.
Video is from the BBC:
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Fortunately Australia have not gone the "democratic" route that the UK and the US have gone down by killing thousands of their citizens when new outbreaks have occurred.
 
Puppycow said:
Meanwhile in the USA, anti-vaxxers are having "COVID parties" to intentionally infect their own children. Including, in at least one case, one who was immuno-compromised.

Carsyn Leigh Davis



Congratulations lady, you killed your daughter. Now she's using her daughter's death to raise money.


Back in April, she posted this on Facebook:
https://floridacovidvictims.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/carsyn-leigh-davis3.png
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That is not exactly true. It was not specifically a covid party other than the fact that all parties are covid parties at the moment.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
So, it would appear Melbourne is locking down a giant high rise in the poor side of town while rich suburbs including apartments are not given the same discourtesy.
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People living in rich suburbs don't have the kind of jobs where you get infected. They are much more likely to work from home, their living quarters usually aren't as cramped as in poor suburbs, and they don't use public transportation as much as people in poor neighborhoods.
That is at the root of it. It's not a 'courtesy' given to people in rich suburbs. Those suburbs just aren't as infected as the poor ones so there is no need to quarantine them.
And it's not just in Australia; it's the same all over the (Western) world:
In the USA
In Germany
In Sweden
 
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